Flight Status
by Serrafina
Summary: Kara asks Lee for her flight status back. Set between Torn and A Measure of Salvation.


Title: Flight Status

Disclaimer: Don't own 'em.

Summary: Kara asks Lee for her flight status back. Set between Torn and A Measure of Salvation.

AN: When I watched Measure of Salvation, I was disappointed that we didn't get to see this. And so I went looking for a fanfiction version, and didn't find one. So I wrote my own. Love feedback of any kind.

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Lee shouldn't be surprised when Starbuck knocks on his door, but he is. She always has had a knack for shocking him.

He almost doesn't notice the change in her when she steps through the hatch; for a second, he forgets to hate her and is ready to smile and make some wisecrack about her flying or her attitude. But a second is all it takes for the familiar rage to come rushing back. He barely registers her almost-clean blues and her hair, almost as short as it had been at the decommissioning ceremony. Its deceptively familiar and simultaneously pleases and pisses him off.

He considers briefly what to call her. She looks more like the Starbuck he knew, before she ran off to New Caprica and Sam and came back a shadow of a person, with long hair and dark eyes and sarcasm that had a little too much bite for comfort. But he's never seen Starbuck looking so damn scared. It's a heady feeling when he realizes that she's scared of him.

"Yes, Captain?" He isn't sure if he means the words to be angry, if he means to speak her rank like an insult, but they are and he does.

She doesn't flinch. She doesn't look him in the eyes either, standing stiff with her hands behind her back and her gaze forward and unwavering.

"Requesting return to flight duty, sir." She bites out the words as though there's nothing between them, as though he's just a CAG, and she's just a pilot. Well, wannabe pilot. He almost envies her apathy.

"And why the frak should I do that, Starbuck, just because you've got yourself a new makeover?"

"I, um, I'm sorry – about the flight exercise. It won't happen again. Sir."

"You're going to have to do a little better than that, Captain."

A look that he can't read flashes across her face and he wonders why he ever thought he understood her. She bends her head, chewing on her lower lip slightly. A lock of hair falls in front of her eyes and he notices the rough, uneven edges. It looks like she hacked off her hair in a fit of rage and then tried to find someone else – or maybe she did it herself – to smooth over the consequences.

He realizes that she's talking and he's got no idea what she's saying, too busy staring at her hair.

"...what you want from me, sir..." she's saying. When he stops looking at her hair he feels his face flushing as he realizes that she's finally meeting his eyes, and now there's the faintest hint of that old Starbuck smirk.

When he thinks back on the exchange later, he reasons that her expression is what did it. He really couldn't be blamed for losing control – if he ever had it – when she was giving him that damn smirk.

"What I want from you?" Her eyes widen slightly at the harshness of his voice. _Good_, he thinks, glad that he's finally managed to surprise her. "What I want, _Captain_, is to have you _out of my life_."

Her eyes turn steely and he remembers how he used to hate that. Now he likes it because it means he can still make her hurt.

"Unfortunately," he continues, "you still wear the uniform of a Colonial officer, so I guess I'm stuck with you.

"Yeah, well," she says dryly with a shake of her head, "life's a bitch, Lee. Just let me frakking fly and I'll stay out of your way. And if I piss you off you can throw me in the brig." She tries to grin wryly but it comes out a little too sour. "Or out an airlock."

He almost winces at that but then remembers that he hates her.

"I'll return you to flight status – with the understanding that another infraction and you are _out _–" he doesn't specify out of what, "—if you do one thing."

She raises one eyebrow, but doesn't quite manage that insolent devil-may-care look he thinks she was going for.

He remembers countless confused debriefings after the exodus, and struggles to remember her own typically murky file. It's fairly common knowledge that she was held hostage for the majority of the four-month occupation, but unlike other detainees, came back with no evidence of physical trauma. He remembers that she said something about the Leoben model, but nothing further.

"Tell me why."

She hesitates, clearly unsure what he's asking, and he takes pleasure in that.

"Why what, sir?" she says in a voice so quiet, so timid, he's not sure she really said it.

He's not going to let her off the hook so easily. "I think you know."

She bites her lip, then says, "I made a mistake. Sir."

The look in her eyes is starting to make him feel sick, and he suddenly feels a desperate need for this conversation to be _over_. He clears his throat and gathers his tenuous control. "Your mistake nearly cost me two Vipers."

She blinks, just once but slowly. Takes a breath. "I wasn't thinking – lost perspective. I didn't mean for it to happen, but I got careless and I got sloppy. I didn't mean to..." She trails off, and he wonders if it's because she doesn't know what she was going to say, or because what she was going to say was a lie.

He doesn't say anything and she just _looks_ at him and finally he finds his voice and says the only words he can think to say: "Dismissed, Captain. You've got CAP at 0800."

She smiles once, briefly, before turning to go. She pauses with the hatch open and turns back to him. "Lee?"

"Yeah, Starbuck?" The words are out of his mouth before he can stop himself, and he's just glad he didn't slip and say her name.

"I'm really sorry."

He blinks and breathes deeply and looks down at his desk. "Dismissed," he grits out in a not too strangled voice. He stares, unseeing, at his paperwork until he hears the hatch close.

Later he thinks about why he put her back on flight duty and he decides it's because of that look in her eyes. He's disgusted with himself for caving, and he has to blame her, has to hate her, or else he'd have no choice but to hate himself. And that was always her specialty.

Maybe he does understand her after all.


End file.
